Describing the impact of psychological safety on risk prevention: A threshold model construction

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Like other things, psychological safety has a too-much-of-a-good-thing effect on the risk prevention process. There are warranted systematic and theoretical discussions on both positive and negative influences of psychological safety, which provide useful guides to handling potential risks for workers. OBJECTIVE: This study focuses on the psychological safety analysis of work safety for workers in high-risk industries through the construction of a theoretical model, illustrating that a higher level of psychological safety is not better. METHOD: This study explores the impact of workers’ psychological safety on the potential risk of work safety by conducting a comprehensive analysis of relevant literature and employing inductive reasoning and analogy methodology. RESULTS: We systematically reviewed the research background and several hypotheses of psychological safety, described the relationship between psychological safety and risk prevention from three levels, and constructed the threshold initial, special, and extended model of psychological safety to reveal the importance of workers’ psychological safety when handling potential risks. CONCLUSION: This research effectively describes the influence of high, moderate, and low levels of psychological safety on the risk prevention of work safety, which provides a psychological model guide to developing measures for the improvement of work safety management.